China`s Reformers Let More And More Flowers Bloom

October 14, 1986|By Thomas Chen, the pseudonym of a Chinese professor who teaches in the United States.

Hyatt, Sheraton, Holiday Inn and Kentucky Fried Chicken have followed Pepsi and Coke into China. Luciano Pavarotti went there in the summer. Bikinis have finally been accepted to replace leotards by the National Sports Commission for Chinese women who will participate in world contests for body- building--a breakthrough hailed by the sports editor of People`s Daily, the official paper of the Communist Party.

Side by side with these eye-catching changes are others that are less perceptible to the outside world but no less meaningful.

They started with an article in late spring, in People`s Daily, commemorating the 1956-57 policy to ``let a hundred flowers bloom and let a hundred schools of thought contend.`` The article was written in a hospital ward by an ailing former propaganda chief of Mao Tse-tung`s time, obviously at the demand of the present leadership. He tells the history of the ``hundred flowers`` policy, praises it as a good policy, but deplores that it was never earnestly implemented and was soon suspended.

Other articles have appeared, too, demanding democracy and the elimination of Chinese feudal tradition in the ideological and political fields. A few of them, carried prominently in the People`s Daily, directly quoted Deng Xiaoping or a ``a leader of the Central Committee`` to emphasize that the argument they made was not just that of the authors.

On July 31, a senior vice premier made a speech calling for ``the development of socialist democracy.`` On Aug. 3, another vice premier, who is in charge of economy and finance, told a national financial conference that reform of China`s political system is being planned to promote the ongoing economic reform. On Sept. 3, Deng told a Japanese delegation: ``Without political structural reform . . . the success of China`s modernization program would be hindered.``

Most remarkable is this statement from an article entitled ``Establishing Modern Concepts of Democracy and the Rule of Law`` in the Aug. 8 People`s Daily (Overseas Edition): ``As is pointed out by a leader of the Central Committee, if we don`t talk about freedom, democracy, human rights, humanitarianism, labeling them capitalistic, what then is left of socialism?

Should we only talk about dictatorship, punishment and struggle? How would our socialism then show its superiority?`` A resolution on the guiding principles for socialist ideology and ethics, just passed at a Central Committee meeting in late September, confirmed the above views.

In the meantime, the seamy side of Chinese society is being publicized more and more in newspapers and magazines, and depicted in literature, the theater and movies. Some unorthodox views are being voiced. A former deputy chief editor of the People`s Daily, who was dismissed in 1983 because of his unorthodox views, is allowed to speak out again in a just-published book on humanitarianism. A leading Chinese novelist, also president of the Chinese Writers Association, openly condemned in an essay the ``antispiritual pollution campaign`` of 1983.

Why are these changes occurring? The answer lies in the difficulties Chinese leaders have had ever since they started reforms in the cities.

The difficulties were caused partly by the rigidity of the old economic structure, which could not be changed so easily as the rural commune system could be. Planning was highly centralized, and is still so; production is driven not by consumer demand but by central planners.

Another source of trouble has been the Chinese bureaucracy, which has grown from 19 million in 1980 to 26.6 million in 1985. But its size is not its worst problem. The bureaucracy consists overwhelmingly of Communist Party members, who have been told that they are made of ``special material`` and so are entitled to privileges like access to information and the right to inform on and discuss people`s out-of-line opinions and activities. (This fairy tale serves to legitimize, consolidate and sanctify the rule of the party.)

Party members at the core of the bureaucracy have become an elite. A privileged ruling class has grown up in spite of Mao`s repeated warnings and Deng`s rectification campaign against corruption and abuse of power. Whenever changes worked against the privileges of this ruling class, it resisted them. As a result, Deng`s effort to overhaul the bureaucracy in order to do away with resistance to reforms has not achieved its aim. Old bureaucrats were replaced by younger ones, and very few true reformers were selected. Obviously, the old way of picking and supervising bureaucrats should be changed. There is an urgent need for a new mechanism, an urgent need for political reform.